


Stray Thoughts

by Paint_It_Yellow



Series: Life Goes On (Post GX Canon) [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Bonding, Depressive thoughts pop up at the worst of times, Gen, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 09:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14517150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paint_It_Yellow/pseuds/Paint_It_Yellow
Summary: There's no better time to share the thoughts that have been plaguing you for years than in the late evening while freeloading off your friend.





	Stray Thoughts

“Do you ever regret being a teacher?” 

Asuka looked over at Judai in confusion, after moments of sitting in comfortable silence in the dim lighting of her living room, Asuka was sure that her friend had fallen asleep, but it appears she was wrong for once. For a moment, she just stared at Judai before placing a bookmark on the page she was currently at and placing the book on the arm of her chair. 

“What do you mean?” 

Judai hesitated for a moment, looking as though he was going to back out of the conversation, before reluctantly deciding against it. “It’s just… There’s so many options, for the future, I mean. You could’ve done pretty much anything after school with grades like yours- everyone thought you were going to go into pro-dueling.”

Judai paused and Asuka had thought that he was doing so for a response, but a look at her friend told her to hold anything she wanted to say for just a moment later. 

“It’s weird. Even though I travel I have to stop every now and then to get a part-time job, but I never take the same job twice. Sometimes, I think about it. Settling down somewhere, just stopping and living the rest of my life in peace.” Judai brought his hand up from where it lay limp over the side of the couch, absentmindedly scratching Pharaoh’s ear, who sat squeezed comfortably between Judai’s side and the back of the couch. 

“And what stops you from settling down?” Asuka asked, partially out of just pure curiosity, and partially out of a want to try and get to the root of the problem.

Judai hummed quietly in thought. “I ask myself the same question sometimes,” he said, a small smile appearing on his face despite his words. “I tell myself it’s because other’s need me- that  _ that’s  _ my job. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking it’s something else.”

“Like what?” 

“Fear, possibly.”

Asuka opened her mouth to speak before closing it and sitting back, instead taking a moment to think. She couldn’t say she didn’t understand Judai’s sentiments, she could at least understand them on a surface level, with all that he’d been through after staying in one place for only three years, it was no wonder he was scared of doing so again, even if it had been years ago now.

She sat upright again. “Judai, nothing’s going to happen again- not like that. Not to you, to me, to Shou or Johan. You know that, right?” She kept her voice soft and quiet. 

Judai let out a rugged breath, seeming somewhat unsure. “I know, it’s just…”

“Hard?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Do you think about things like this a lot?”

“Sometimes, it comes and goes. I thought I was over it, but every time I think that I just get down again.” 

“It’s a long road to recovery, Judai. Don’t rush yourself, take it one step at a time. I know you have a problem with keeping contact with people, but we’re all here for you if you need us.”

“Yeah… Yeah.” The second iteration sounds much more resolute, even if not by much. A smile played on his lips. “Sounding like a real teacher there, Asuka.”

Asuka allowed herself a smile at the comment as well before sitting forward, slapping her hands to her knees and shoving herself to her feet. Judai shifted his head to look at her for the first time since their conversation started and did so in a way that couldn’t possibly be all too comfortable. 

“Something wrong?” 

“Hold on a moment,” was all she replied, and Judai, not feeling up to moving from his place or disturbing Pharaoh, held on for a moment as Asuka headed out of the living room and through to the hall.

She wasn’t gone for long enough for confusion to properly set in, but she was gone long enough for curiosity to show up. Within maybe only a minute, Asuka returned to the room, carrying what seemed to be an album under one of her arms.

“Move over a bit,” she instructed. 

Judai groaned and held his arms up in the air above him. Asuka sighed before placing the album down and heaving Judai up into a sitting position, earning a mumbled ‘thanks’ as he corrected his position to properly sit down, lifting the now half-awake Pharaoh onto his lap. Asuka grabbed the album once more before sitting down in the vacated area, album situated in her lap.

“So… What’s that for?” 

“You asked me if I regretted becoming a teacher, right?” 

“Uh, yeah, I suppose?”

“I never answered, but I think it’d do you some good to know the answer.”

“What’s the album got to do with it?” 

“Think of it as a visual aid, of sorts.”

Judai hummed, signalling that he’d heard the words but was over all too lazy to answer properly. 

“To answer your previous question; I used to, at times. I’d be marking test papers or homework and I’d pause and think of all my friends. Shou’s running his own circuit while both Edo and Manjoume are off being pro-duelists. You’re traveling around, seeing the sights and helping people who may otherwise not get the help they needed, my brother’s just off doing whatever pleases him- the epitome of taking life as it comes, really. Everyone’s doing all these things that are so varied while I’m just there, teaching on a routine. It got quite bad at one point, honestly. I’ve not even been teaching all that long, and the thought of being so down about something I was so passionate about being so early didn’t help.”

“So how’d you snap out of it?” 

“I wouldn’t say there was any one moment, as I said earlier, it’s a long road to recovery, but a huge moment that solidified my want to teach was when I was laying off a senior class for the first time- when they were graduating.”

“You didn’t pull a Chronos, did you?” Judai asked, semi-serious. 

Asuka chuckled. “No, no. I was more nervous than anything. Had I taught them enough? Would they be okay in the real world? I was much more nervous than they could’ve ever been.”

Judai looked at her, pressing her to continue, which prompted Asuka to open the album, flicking through a few pages to get to the one she was looking for. Judai leaned over curiously, leaning on her arm as he did so. 

“This one,” she pointed to the first picture on the page. “This is the whole class. They were dead-set on getting a class photo, even though I’m sure half of them didn’t know each other, they were even more dead-set that I was in it.”

“Why?” 

“I think they noticed,” Asuka began, looking at the memory on the page fondly. 

“Noticed what?” 

“How bad I was feeling- how bad I was getting. Kids are perceptive, more so than you realise, more so than they realise, even. They were a good bunch, too.”

“You sound like you’re fifty. They weren’t even kids at that point!”

“I feel it sometimes,” Asuka chuckled, Judai smiling knowingly. “When you’re a teacher, all of them are kids. No matter how old they get, they’re all your kids. It’s like being a parent in some ways.”

“Anyway. Seeing all these kids that I’d watched grow and mature have fun even when that same day, just moments before or after, they were crying, it made me reevaluate the way I was thinking about it.”

“I spent so much time thinking about what my friends were doing, about the ways that they differed from what I was doing, instead of  _ actually  _ thinking about what I was doing. I was completely laying off all the good I was doing and all the fun I had in favour of just feeling bad. I’m no expert, but I’m starting to think that it’s just how human brains are sometimes. They like to flaw things instead of looking at the good things.”

Judai stared at the picture for a moment before looking at the other pictures on the page, Asuka’s words floating around in his head as he did so. 

A lot of the photos on that page were of Asuka and the students from that class, in smaller groups this time, sometimes just one at a time. Scanning over the page next to it though, one specific picture caught his eye.

It wouldn’t have been a photo of interest if not for a second, closer, look revealing more details. It was a simple picture, one of the students was handing Asuka a small bouquet of flowers, looking newly bought. A look at her face in the picture would show her to be clearly surprised, eyes looking a bit watery. 

Judai looked back over to the Asuka next to him before looking back down and pointing to it. 

“Are you crying there?” It was more teasing than anything. 

“Me? Cry? Never.” Asuka replied, seemingly indignant, but she was smiling despite herself. 

Judai hummed and shot her a grin. 

“And now we’re pulling back round to you,” Asuka spoke again after a moment’s pause. “When you feel down, it’s okay to talk about it, you know? Just because it’s been years doesn’t mean the trauma is gone, just like that, even if it feels like it. I’ve told you of a moment that was a big impact on making me keep teaching, and you’re still traveling despite everything, so I’m sure you have moments like those too. Focus on those because, and trust me on this one, they make the  _ whole _ thing worth it.”

As Asuka drew the album shut, Judai continued to lean on her, momentarily lost in thought. As the silence continued on, Asuka looked down at his face to make sure he hadn’t fallen asleep on her. 

“There was this one moment,” Judai began suddenly, eyes half closed as he spoke. “It was probably less than a year into when I first started traveling. We were about to leave this one village since we’d only stopped so I could get some money, and me, Yubel and Professor Daitokuji were all discussing where we’d go next on our way back to the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at when a young kid stopped dead and just stared right at Yubel. It was a bit freaky at first.”

“You were heading back? What was a kid doing out at night?” 

Judai made a sound meant to signify that he didn’t know. “So the kid just stared at Yubel, who had notified me of the kid in the first place, and he completely ignored me, then ran into one of the houses along the street. Thought it was the last I’d see him, but only moments later, he came back out with a stack of cards-”

“Not a deck?”

“There were too many cards for a deck, and they were all monster cards, too. He looked at Yubel, then at Professor Daitokuji, then at me and you know what he said?” 

“Mm?” 

“‘I don’t have your cards’.”

Asuka suppressed a snort. “He thought you and Professor Daitokuji were duel monster spirits?” 

“Yeah, it took a while to get it out of him, but apparently he’d only ever been able to see the spirits of the cards he owned, and it took a bit too long to explain that neither me nor the Professor are duel spirits.”

“Why’d he think you were a card spirit, I mean, you don’t exactly look like one in contrast to the likes of Yubel,” Asuka paused. “No offense to Yubel, if they’re listening.”

“Yubel crossed their arms and huffed, that means you’re all good.”

“Always nice to know,” Asuka said, starting to feel her own eyes droop a bit. “Anyway, as you were saying?”

“We ended up staying an extra day, just to talk this kid through all the essentials,” Judai explained, closing his eyes fully now, head leaning simultaneously on Asuka and the back of the couch. “It’s when I meet kids like him that I feel like I think you were getting at. To see that some kids are totally happy and innocent with being able to see card spirits, to have to go through the motions of helping them explain it to their parents- to know that their parents are completely  _ fine  _ with it. Knowing that a kid doesn’t feel alone in the world because of some strange power he has. It’s a nice feeling.”

Asuka hummed in agreement, shifting into a slightly more comfortable position as she let herself sink into the couch a bit more. The two lapsed into silence for a moment and Asuka’s eyes were about to slip closed when she heard Judai mumble something. 

“Thanks.”

“What for?” She mumbled back. 

“Talking to me about my problems even though I’m freeloading off you right now in the first place.”

“Once an idiot always an idiot.” She allowed her eyes to shut like they’d been interrupted from doing before.

“What?” 

“I’m your friend, we’ve been over this. Friends don’t let friends carry burdens alone.”

Judai hummed lowly and they fell into silence, soon, Asuka’s breath started to even out as her tiredness overtook her. Judai, still awake, smiled to himself before falling asleep, feeling more loved than one could imagine a single conversation could make a man.

**Author's Note:**

> This is really self-indulgent, sorry, I just live for Asuka and Judai's friendship and pushing my bad mood onto them.
> 
> Hope someone found something out of this though, that'd be nice.


End file.
